Subject: Hirschfeld's Pink Petitions for SF bathhouse ballot
From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 14:30:18 EDT

For Immediate Release                                                         
       
May 19, 1999                                                                  
                          
Michael Petrelis
415-621-6267

              "OPEN BATHS, OPEN MINDS" CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED;

           VOTERS ASKED TO SIGN PINK PETITIONS FOR INITIATIVE

(San Francisco, CA) - A news conference to launch the signature gathering 
phase for a bathhouse ballot initiative will be held on Thursday, May 20 at 
12 noon in the heart of the Castro district, 18th and Castro streets.  
Signature gathering will go from 12 noon until 2 p.m.

The initiative is sponsored by the Magnus Hirschfeld Society, a group 
dedicated to practicing the sexual liberation teachings of the pioneer German 
gay leader.

"Hopefully, open minded voters will put their John Hancocks on the stylish 
Pink Petitions.  Not that I am a size queen in these matters, but I need 
10,500 valid signatures by July 5 to qualify for the ballot in November," 
said Michael Petrelis, a member of the Magnus Hirschfeld Society.  "Signing 
the Pink Petition equals affixing one's signature to a Declaration of Sexual 
Independence From Willie Brown's Sex Police.  Will gay men rise to the 
challenge?"

"Open Baths, Open Minds" is the slogan for the pressure group.

"Our city has given the world the Summer of Love, the annual heterosexual 
Hooker's Ball, the Folsom Street Fair for leather and S/M enthusiasts, the 
Beatniks, and Madam Sally Stanford's brothel.  Surely, we can find room in 
our civic heart to allow a modicum of privacy to gay men to safely love each 
other behind the closed doors of a public bathhouse," Petrelis said.  "I am 
not yet 
willing to throw in the towel on the seemingly permanent prohibition on 
bathhouses in San Francisco."

The Magnus Hirschfeld Society promotes the man who in 1897 formed the world's 
first homosexual rights organization, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee.  
It had three goals: abolish the anti-sodomy statute Paragraph 175 of the 
penal code, enlighten public attitudes about homosexuals, and interest 
homosexuals in the struggle for their rights.  To achieve the first goal, 
Hirschfeld's organization garnered thousands of signatures on petitions and 
presented them to the Reichstag.  Hirschfeld's scientific institute was 
plundered and burned by the Nazis, just before he was forced into exile.  He 
died in France on his birthday.

At the May 20 kick-off the group will play Bette Midler and Barry Manilow 
music to remind voters of where these entertainers got their starts in show 
biz -- at the baths.  The Magnus Hirschfeld Society will also display a safe 
sex kit consisting of a clean towel, containing anal condoms, penile condoms, 
lube, and safe sex instructions -- to be given to every patron upon entry at 
a San Franciscan bathhouse -- should they be reopened.

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